Back in 2012, it was announced that Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road) had signed on to play Sam Fisher in a big screen version of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. The project went quiet until 2014 when Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) was announced to direct, but he left the project and Frank John (Dark Tourist) was hired to write a new script. It was unknown if Hardy was still attached, but it appears he is.
“It’s exactly like Tom Hardy with Splinter Cell – we chose Tom for exactly the same reason”, Former Ubisoft CEO Jean-Julien Baronnet said recently when talking about Michael Fassbender in Assassin’s Creed. “Tom is doing indie movies like Bronson and he’s doing Batman or whatever or Mad Max. So this combination of factors for us was very important because it was a symbol for what we want to do in a movie – which is to do a movie of course that should be mainstream, but with the content we would like to have, so Michael does exactly this kind of stuff”.
Ubisoft launched Ubisoft Motion Pictures in 2011 and announced big screen adaptations of Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Watch Dogs. Assassin’s Creed, their first movie, is out in December this year.
Originally published May 13, 2016. Updated June 30, 2023.
